The complete Bachman Turner Overdrive discography in an iPod might be a great way to help work fly by. But a new report suggests that companies that don’t control portable storage devices aren’t — as the group’s 1973 hit said — “Takin’ Care of Business.”

Indeed, according to Gartner Research, one of the largest threats to corporate security fits in your pocket and may share space with the likes of OutKast and The Strokes.

MP3 players, flash cards and other portable storage devices can easily contain malicious software that can be used to attack corporate networks. Or their high-storage capacity can be used to seize company secrets or intellectual property, wrote Ruggero Contu, a Gartner analyst.

He recommends that companies ban the devices.

A key-chain thumb drive can store up to a gigabyte of data and slide easily into a pocket, an iPod can copy an entire hard drive in minutes and get tossed in a briefcase.

“These devices are becoming more and more popular, and there is the risk from employees abusing them,” Contu said in an interview.

Bill Stearns, an instructor for the Sans Institute, a company that teaches telecommunications security, said devices such as the iPod are just “one more tool in the arsenal.”

“The ability to walk out of that building with every single document in the building would take two to three weeks with an iPod, as opposed to two to three years with e-mail,” Stearns said.

Doris Gardner, head of North Carolina’s cyber-crime squad for the FBI, said that her unit hasn’t seen USB or FireWire devices as a unique threat to corporate security.

“We have had instances where you have a disgruntled employee that will e-mail the information out, or just take a laptop in there,” Gardner said. “We haven’t had that many reports of USB devices.”

But portable storage devices do make corporate abuse easier and some technology companies were wary of the potential hazards long before Gartner issued its report last month.

Spencer Kupferman, a vice president at Raleigh (N.C.) Global Software, said his company keeps tight restrictions on what employees can and can’t connect to its network. If an employee connected a device without going through Global’s information technology department, it would be noticed pretty quickly, he said.

“They keep a close eye on what people are downloading,” Kupferman said.

PeopleClick in Raleigh, N.C. said that it rarely allows its employees to access its network with third-party devices.

“We’re very funny about not plugging external devices into our network,” Michael Eason, PeopleClick’s vice president of development, said.

The company has not had any problems with portable devices, and it wants to keep it that way.

IBM has a more liberal policy on third-party devices, but takes security seriously.

Clain Anderson, with network security at IBM, said the company has a policy to protect its data through employee vigilance. He asks workers to encrypt their files and use innovations such as fingerprint readers to access their computers to make sure no one has used them in their absence.

But no company can be 100 percent safe from workers bent on breaking the rules, PeopleClick’s Eason said.

“At some level, you have to trust in the integrity of your employees,” he said.

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.